How long did it take to gain traction for your new ecommerce store?

[BlackMagicX]

And what tweaks did you make to really fuel your growth?

Is there any success stories out there?

 

[Reba]

Is there any success stories out there?

Yes, eBay are doing quite well as are Amazon.

 

[Ninja Commerce]

I've worked with several e-commerce sites, some brand new, and the time it takes to get traction varies a bit.

However, by far the most powerful way to get traction quickly is to spend money on advertising.

I would say that for most e-commerce sites, the essentials are:

1. Make sure your website looks good
2. And that the checkout flow is easy to use
3. Set up analytics with e-commerce tracking
4. Set up a Google product feed
5. Set up an Adwords campaign (both regular and shopping)
6. Do likewise in Bing
7. Use remarketing
8. Set up an email list and give customers the option to sign up

After that, just track everything, relentlessly. At first, your Adwords might well be unprofitable, but with hard work it should be possible (in most niches) to reach break even point, and as soon as you do that, you can afford to keep doing it and trying to eek out a profit.

Your email list is your "traction". If your PPC is paying for itself, you are building your email list for free, so any sales you make from email marketing are pure profit.

SEO is also powerful, and in the long term may be more profitable than PPC, but it's a much longer term approach, so if you are hoping to launch your e-commerce business purely using SEO, you are going to take a lot longer to get any traction.

It also depends a lot on how good your business model is.

I have seen e-commerce businesses become profitble (using paid traffic) within 3 months of launch.

 

[BlackMagicX]

I've worked with several e-commerce sites, some brand new, and the time it takes to get traction varies a bit.

However, by far the most powerful way to get traction quickly is to spend money on advertising.

I would say that for most e-commerce sites, the essentials are:

1. Make sure your website looks good
2. And that the checkout flow is easy to use
3. Set up analytics with e-commerce tracking
4. Set up a Google product feed
5. Set up an Adwords campaign (both regular and shopping)
6. Do likewise in Bing
7. Use remarketing
8. Set up an email list and give customers the option to sign up

After that, just track everything, relentlessly. At first, your Adwords might well be unprofitable, but with hard work it should be possible (in most niches) to reach break even point, and as soon as you do that, you can afford to keep doing it and trying to eek out a profit.

Your email list is your "traction". If your PPC is paying for itself, you are building your email list for free, so any sales you make from email marketing are pure profit.

SEO is also powerful, and in the long term may be more profitable than PPC, but it's a much longer term approach, so if you are hoping to launch your e-commerce business purely using SEO, you are going to take a lot longer to get any traction.

It also depends a lot on how good your business model is.

I have seen e-commerce businesses become profitble (using paid traffic) within 3 months of launch.

Really good advice here.

 

[Mr D]

Getting the site in front of people is the hard thing.
We do offline selling as well so every customer got a flyer for the website, plenty of local advertising and many hours leafleting estates myself.
We had results from each.

 

[quikshop]

Depends on the website, I bought a failed Ecommerce business but with great SERPS and within 6 months it was a 6-figure turnover website. Brand new websites have taken anywhere from 3-12 months to get that initial steady trickle of orders.

I've also tried a £10k a month Adwords budget for a new website and orders took off, but dropped away again when the cost per customer became unsustainable - there is no replacement for good SERPS, viral marketing and building momentum in your website brand and products

Edit: I should add, those of us who remember the dot-com bubble bursting at the turn of the Century will remember all the ridiculous business models of huge marketing spikes to drive business in order to raise more funds, to buy more huge marketing spikes to drive more business etc etc. As soon as the big spending stopped, the businesses crashed.

 

[BlackMagicX]

Depends on the website, I bought a failed Ecommerce business but with great SERPS and within 6 months it was a 6-figure turnover website. Brand new websites have taken anywhere from 3-12 months to get that initial steady trickle of orders.

I've also tried a £10k a month Adwords budget for a new website and orders took off, but dropped away again when the cost per customer became unsustainable - there is no replacement for good SERPS, viral marketing and building momentum in your website brand and products

Edit: I should add, those of us who remember the dot-com bubble bursting at the turn of the Century will remember all the ridiculous business models of huge marketing spikes to drive business in order to raise more funds, to buy more huge marketing spikes to drive more business etc etc. As soon as the big spending stopped, the businesses crashed.

Great advice. I think the SERP is the most important part in Marketing, it's just takes a while for a new store to have it, unless it has been acquired. I keep hearing the 3 to 6 month mark for new stores. Those that do start to generate orders in this time frame, do you put it down to Google finally indexing your site, or Adwords and Remarketing finiding your customer?

 

[quikshop]

It's not quite as simple as it was back in my Ecommerce days. Thought needs to be given about joining up sales channels, Amazon and eBay both great for volume but not so for profit margin... and selling through Amazon will test your service levels to maintain good ratings.

SERPS will need frequent action delivered over time, more so if your market is competitive, but as others will point out your single most important task will be to make sure your website is optimised to convert visitors into paying customers.

 

[ddmcmullan]

Depends what you mean by traction.

Half decent income - 2 years
Real traction (increasing growth rate year on year) - 3 to 4 years
Time till business didn't revolve around me - 5 years

It all depends though on your experience, capital and market, but mainly I would say experience. If I started another business it would be much quicker as I have more of both.

Good luck!